Burn Your Kingdom Down
by seimaisin
Summary: Anders escapes the Circle seven times. Karl lives through every one.


(1)

"So, they sent you in here to keep an eye on me, did they?"

Karl smiles at Anders. He knows him well enough - while Anders was just a child before Karl was harrowed, now that Irving lets him teach healing classes, he's familiar with most of the older apprentices. "Yep," he says. When Anders frowns, he spreads his hands. "Hey, better me than the new Templar recruit they were going to put in here, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"So," Karl says, sitting down on the end of the cot. Anders is curled up on the opposite end, his knees under his chin and his arms around his calves. It makes him look younger than his nearly eighteen years. "Why did you do it?"

Anders looks up. "Why don't you?" he challenges. "Why doesn't everyone? We're prisoners here, no better than criminals."

Something twists in Karl's stomach. It isn't like he hasn't thought like that before. "It's Chantry law," he says. It's an automatic response - true as far as it goes, but since when has the truth ever been easy to swallow? "If you managed to escape, you'd be an apostate, and they'd hunt you down."

"It might be worth it, if I could just have a few days of freedom. I just want to know what it feels like." Anders' eyes suddenly narrow; he unfolds himself and leans back on his elbows. He looks at Karl with half-lidded eyes. Karl grins at the obvious ploy. "What would you do?" Anders asks, his voice lower than it has been. "If you had freedom. Right now. What would be the first thing you'd do?"

As he looks at the way Anders' robes stretch across his shoulders, Karl thinks that voicing his very first instinct would be a very bad plan. Because he's not a teenager any more, and there's no reason to act like one just because an attractive boy is giving him what should be a ridiculous come-hither look.

But, he thinks as he settles himself against the bed frame and looks for an innocuous answer, this one's going to be dangerous in a couple of years.

(2)

"Swimming, Anders? Really?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time." Anders starts to peel off the impossibly dirty robes he'd been brought back in - probably the same ones he swam across the lake in. "We were outside, there were no templars near me, I could see the docks in the distance … I'm just glad I could swim."

Karl furrows his brow. "You didn't know if you could swim?"

"It seemed like something I should know. Like I learned when I was little." Anders shrugs. "It worked, didn't it? At least for a little while."

Anders is down to his smalls; his back is to Karl, so Karl doesn't feel too bad about looking twice at the boy's broad shoulders. Or lower. He turns away, though, just as Anders starts to turn back around. "They're going to Harrow you, you know. Tonight."

"Are they?" Anders snorts. "Finally. I was wondering when the First Enchanter would get around to that."

"You're lucky. From what I hear, Greagoir was asking for the Rite of Tranquility."

When Karl turns back, he sees Anders shiver, and knows it's not from the lack of clothing. "Perhaps," he says gently, "you might think about laying low for a little while after your Harrowing."

Anders' lips quirk upwards. "You're sure I'll pass?"

"You don't need me to feed your ego, boy." But Karl grins. "You'll be fine."

Karl turns to leave the room. Anders clears his throat. "What? No kiss for luck?"

The innocent tone makes Karl laugh - and apparently makes him forget any sort of good sense, because before he can stop himself, he turns back to Anders and slips a hand behind his neck.

Anders is … not unskilled, but definitely doesn't kiss like he's as experienced as he likes to lead everyone to believe. When Karl angles his head for a better vantage, Anders sighs and presses closer, his skin warm even through Karl's robes. His fingers grip Karl's hips. The feeling is a little too good - for a moment, he nearly forgets there's a pair of templars right outside, waiting to take Anders to his Harrowing. They'd only let Karl in so he could ostensibly check for wounds or illness.

But the templars remain, and kissing a somewhat-inexperienced boy is a pleasure best left for later. (Actually, it's a pleasure best left alone entirely, but Karl can't pretend he won't return to it if given the chance.) He pulls away from Anders, and grins when Anders tries to pull him back with a fist full of Karl's robe. "You don't need that much luck," Karl says.

Later, when he hears the templars grumbling about how short the Harrowing was, he knows he was right.

(3)

He hears about Anders' capture by accident - several of his students whispering loudly during class. Karl goes to Irving immediately afterwards. "Where was he this time?"

Irving scrubs a hand over his face. "West Hill. He convinced a merchant that he was his long-lost nephew. Not a bad gambit, though I wonder how he knew the man hadn't seen his nephew since childhood."

"He's good at knowing things he shouldn't." Karl sighs. "Where is he now?"

"The templars have him in their holding cell. Greagoir is trying to figure out how to make an example of him."

Karl isn't sure what that might mean until Anders shows up in his quarters later that night, pale and walking gingerly. "Can I trouble you for some healing?" he asks, his voice little more than a rasp.

"Maker's breath, just lay down." When Anders strips off his robes, Karl sees at least a dozen welts crossing his back. "Oh, Anders," he murmurs. He sits on the edge of the bed and calls up a spell wisp to help him soothe the angry red marks.

Anders grabs Karl's pillow and hugs it tight to his chest as Karl works. "You remember Adria?" he asks, after a few minutes.

"Hmmm," Karl answers, his brain only half on the conversation. "The pretty little apprentice, the one who wears flowers in her hair all the time?"

"Yeah." Anders paused. "She and a couple of her friends were meeting late at night, after curfew. They weren't doing anything bad, just reading some bad Antivan romance novels and gossiping. They weren't hurting anyone." Anders props his chin up on the pillow, looking straight at the wall. "A templar caught her. Marken, you may not know him, he's just transferred in from somewhere in the Free Marches, and they have him assigned to the apprentice dorms all the time. He … he made her cut a deal for his silence. She had to do anything he wanted. And she did. Serviced him whenever and wherever he pleased. Until she told one of her friends, and her friend complained to one of the senior enchanters." Anders looked over his shoulder at Karl. "Do you know what happened?"

"No, what?"

"Nothing." Anders looked back at the wall again. "Absolutely bloody _nothing_. Marken still guards the apprentices, and at least before I left, Adria was still at his mercy."

Karl finishes his work, and pokes Anders in the hip until he rolls over onto his side. Karl stretches out on the bed facing him. "I'll talk to Irving about it."

Anders snorts. "Not like he'll help."

"I can try."

"If you want," Anders says, but his voice states exactly what he thinks of Karl's chances. He sighs. "We don't belong here, Karl. None of us. But here I am, back again. Because someone couldn't keep their mouth shut when they saw me lighting a fire."

"Were you really that dumb?"

The pout that appears on Anders' face would be more comedic if Karl hadn't spent the better part of an hour working on his wounds. "Shut up."

"You know you can make fire without magic. Normal people do it every day."

"Shut up. I was … in a hurry."

"Clearly."

Karl reaches over and strokes Anders' chest. He's rewarded with a low hum; it's not contentment, not right now, but it's a release of tension. That's all he can ask for.

He winds his body around Anders that night, and tries to forget the despair that shadowed Anders' eyes.

(4)

He doesn't see Anders until two weeks after his return. Karl finds him in the library, looking pale and sitting gingerly in a chair. "You could have come to me," he says, sliding into a chair across the table. "If you needed healing."

"I didn't want to get you in trouble." Anders looks up, but his smile doesn't reach his eyes. "Besides, they let me work on myself after the worst of it."

Karl wants to cross the table and put his arms around Anders. But that moment has long since passed for the two of them; he can only offer emotional comfort these days. If Anders will let him even do that. "How did you get caught this time?"

"I have no idea, honestly. I was in an inn somewhere in the Bannorn, and the templars just showed up out of nowhere. Someone must have ratted me out, but I can't even remember when I did magic to give myself away." Anders puts his elbows on the table and rubs his temples. "But here I am."

"Well," Karl says, giving Anders a smile, "you might be pleased to know that you had the entire apprentice dorm believing that you'd been given a secret, special assignment to Orlais, and that all the fuss the templars were making was just a cover-up so no one would know where you'd really gone."

That gets a laugh out of Anders. "Oh, good. At least my plans went right in one way."

"You should at least make up some good stories to tell the kids when they ask you about it."

"I'll start thinking now."

Karl leaves Anders sitting at the table. He can see the bruises blooming underneath the collar of Anders' robes, but doesn't say anything.

Later, laying in bed and staring at the ceiling, he wishes he had.

(5)

Karl has been mostly sequestered with his latest group of apprentices, so he doesn't hear of Anders' escape. Or his return, until Irving mentions it in passing during a meeting. "Greagoir insisted we keep his latest adventure quiet," Irving said. "It wouldn't do to encourage the young ones any more."

When the meeting is over, Karl looks for Anders, but the idiot is nowhere to be found.

The next time they meet, some days later, Anders just shakes his head at Karl. "I'm fine," he says.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah." Anders walks away before Karl can say anything else.

Karl doesn't see him again for several weeks. When he does appear again, Anders seems to be his old self, telling horrible stories and helping the apprentices play practical jokes on their instructors and the templars. If there seems to be something brittle about his humor … well, Karl may well be imagining that. But he doesn't think so.

(6)

"Solitary confinement? For a _year_?"

Karl is yelling, and he doesn't even care that Greagoir is in the room. He leans over the desk, looming over Irving. "Can you really be that cruel?"

Greagoir speaks before Irving can open his mouth. "It's better than the little bastard deserves. Six escapes. He should have a death sentence by now."

Karl whirls around to face the Knight-Commander. "He hasn't hurt anyone. Not one person! In fact, didn't I hear he got caught this time because he stopped to help heal a farmer? And for that, you lock him away, without any other human contact, for a year?"

"He's a mage, Enchanter." Greagoir steps closer to Karl, until Karl has to tilt his head up to look him in the eye. "The Maker wills all of you to be kept safe - and for the world to be kept safe from you. I'm sworn to uphold the Maker's law. I take that very seriously."

"Anders is unstable, Karl," Irving puts in, rising from his desk. "He needs help."

Karl turns to face Irving. "And you think depriving him of contact for a year will help?"

"I don't care about helping him any more, quite frankly," Greagoir says. "After six escapes, he's proven himself to be completely untrustworthy. I care about helping everyone else in this tower stay free of his influence."

No amount of arguing will sway either of them. And no cajoling or bribes will get the templars who guard the holding cells to let Karl in to see Anders, even just for a moment. Still, he visits Irving and Greagoir every day for several weeks and asks for permission anyway.

And then Uldred nearly destroys the Tower, and everyone forgets about Anders for a while. Even Karl.

(7)

"Kirkwall's Circle is short on senior enchanters," Irving says. "They've asked for help. I'm sending you."

Karl just stares for a moment. Kirkwall. The Gallows. Apprentices use The Gallows as a story to scare each other with. "Just be grateful you're here," they'll say. "In The Gallows, you have to sleep on dirty hay and they keep you locked up with demons until you get possessed, so they can kill you."

He hasn't been an easily duped apprentice in many years. Still, just thinking about The Gallows gives him a shiver. "Why?" he asks.

Irving hesitates for a moment before answering. "Because you're good," he says. "They can use someone stable, someone good with the kids."

Karl can hear the lie in his voice. _Because you're a problem_. Because the apprentices have been talking, ever since Neria Surana became the Hero of Ferelden, and Karl isn't quashing their dreams. Neria got out, the apprentices say. She got out, and she did something good and important. She's a mage, and she's respected. Maybe, they think, they could be too.

Karl lets them think that. Lets them hope. And for that, he knows, he's being sent to The Gallows.

As Karl gets up to walk out of the office, Irving clears his throat. "I heard that Neria ran into Anders up in Amaranthine. It seems he's a Grey Warden now. At least that should keep him out of the cells here for a while."

Karl holds on to that thought as he travels to the port in Highever. He hopes Anders has found some freedom with the Wardens. Some kind of purpose. Maybe even a little bit of peace.

No peace awaits him in Kirkwall. That much he knows for sure.


End file.
